No I actually haven't been taught to evaluate determinants in general only by Gauss-Jordan elimination. I do know how to find the determinant and I got the same result as you. I'm just wondering if there's anything smart I can do with the function ?

Oct 13th 2012, 02:12 PM

HallsofIvy

Re: Determinant

Okay, by Gauss-Jordan elimination.

Since the first column is $\displaystyle \begin{bmatrix}x+y \\ 0 \\ 0 \\ 0\end{bmatrix}$, we don't have to do anything to the first column. To get "0"s below the diagonal in the second column, subtract twice the second row from the third row and subtract three times the second row from the fourth row:
$\displaystyle \begin{bmatrix}x+ y & 3 & 2 & 1 \\ 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & x+ y & 3\\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1\end{bmatrix}$

Since that is now a triangular matrix, we can practically "read" the determinant of the diagonal. That was easy, wasn't it?